Texas A&M Solar Decathlon

Project Background

Year

2007

Concept

Evidence-based economic design connecting everyday habits and rituals to the performance attributes of a sustainable home.

Ecological Planning + Design Education + Policy

Photo © Prakesh Patel

Evidence-based economic design connecting everyday habits and rituals to the performance attributes of a sustainable home.

Our collaboration with Texas A&M Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Planning and Construction Science proved to have a degree of relevancy on almost all fronts — from material life cycles to using life cycle phases as events that lead the user through everyday rituals of completing resource flows into regenerative environments.

Because A&M is well known for its evidence–based design work within the Health Systems Design program, it was natural to expand this work into what we call evidence–based economic design — responding in the design process to a family’s monthly and annual expenses. We therefore responded directly to five areas of economic activity.

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Shelter

The economic “model” included a consciousness of how important design and symbols can be when connected to responsive electronics coupled with icons that represented the sequence necessary in our daily lives to connect limited sources to water, food, and electricity, so that daily habits more visibly connect to the performance boundaries of a sustainable home environment. After being sited at several locations following the competition on the Washington Mall, since 2015 the building is located on The Center’s grounds in Austin, and is open to the public as part of our monthly First Friday Open House, and by request.

CLIENT

Texas A&M University College of Architecture

FUNDING

Texas A&M Foundation; U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Laboratory; and other private foundations; Apricus Solar Thermal, Suntech America, Hunter Douglas, Alpen Windows and other corporate donors; The Still Water Foundation

TEAM

Pliny Fisk III, Jeff Haberl, Leslie Feigenbaum; John Algood; Aaron Cloninger; David Dewane; Ariel Fisk-Vittori; Melanie Schopper

TEXAS A&M TEAM

Thomas Gerhardt, Jason Bond, Josh Canez, Nick Schaider, Mini Malhotra, Eduardo Ramirez, Piljae Im, Soolyeon Cho, Bo Stewart, Mushtaq Ahmad, Juan-Calos Balthazar, Min-ho Jang, Songchan Song, Zi Liu, Nick Wallace, Cameron Muhic, Josh Schroeder, Keaton Tucker, Jake Walther, Ben Langford, Mike Refsland, Dave Morris, Scott Lyday, John Hale, Darkin Dow, Ricardo Solar, Dario Tiburcio, Jacob Spence, Chris Caffey, Jason Demel, Jonathan Johnson, Nichole Koehler, Natalie Lindholm, Carl Schindewolf, Helen Skelton, Paraskevas Tiburcio, Courtney Brinegar, Camp Bradshaw, Emily Colburn, Ryan Collier, Ross Dansby, Michelle Delaney, JoEllen Eggert, Adam Fenner, Chad Garven, Sheldon Henning, Aldo Hernandez, Mark Olsen, Brian Pankratz, Ben Reiners, Adam Rich, Mike Rutledge, Gus Starkey, Laurie Abbott, Tyrone Austin, Shannon Carpenter, Steven Castaneda, Ross Charba, Robert Gardner, Magan Howard, Haley Marek, Richard Mcfarland, Jordan Prieto, Robin Smith, Jesus Zepeda, Patrick Hurst, Kyle Reeder, Jaret Benson, Patrick Koenning, Andrew Thompson, Brandon Henderson, Ricky Anderson, Justin Goodman, Ben Ligget, Mo McLaughlin, Chris Urban, Sam Brisendine, Ernest Box, Mark Navarro, Ashlee Wilson, Laura Crowe, Eva Peterson, Rebecca Peterson, Rebecca Rangel, Chrystal McLemore, Tina Pruett, Amy Enderle, Amanda King, Christina Smith, Kristen Buckalew